We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day – free speech in Europe edition

“Europe has a serious free speech problem. Instead of taking ever more measures to punish their citizens for what they say, it’s time for countries from Germany to Britain to abolish the deeply illiberal legislation they have, with little attention from the press or the public, introduced over the course of the last decades. To live up to the most basic values of the democracies that are now under threat, the continent needs to reverse course—and restore true freedom of speech.”

Yascha Mounk

Samizdata quote of the day – remember those Apple “1984” adverts?

Apple is doing the public a service in challenging the government on this important matter of principle. Encryption enables more than just ‘secure’ communication – it ensures freedom from government snooping, too. That’s why privacy and freedom of expression have long been considered mutually reinforcing rights. Encryption protects not only personal data, but also the ability of journalists and human-rights activists to operate without fear of surveillance or reprisals. Compelling companies to pre-emptively weaken those protections risks chilling users’ ability to communicate freely, share sensitive information or challenge the powers-that-be.

Freddie Attenborough

LOL Remember this?

Samizdata quote of the day – an unsquared circle

Democracy tends towards protectionism when those harmed by free trade are numerous enough to count. But democracy also demands cheap goods. No one has yet squared that circle.

Robert Tombs

Samizdata quote of the day – regarding a show about as funny as a washing machine manual

Like most people, I haven’t tuned in to Have I Got News For You for years. But when I heard of a staggering omission in last Friday night’s edition, I just had to see it – or, rather, not see it – with my own eyes. The biggest news story of the week – the momentous ruling by the Supreme Court on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act 2010 – was not covered at all, even obliquely. You’d think that the absurdity of the highest court in the land being called to adjudicate on one of the most basic facts of observable reality – that there are two sexes, and that the words man and woman mean, er, man and woman – would be a rich source of mirth, the kind of glorious nonsense that’s a satirist’s meat and drink. But no. Not a word. Zilch.

‘We begin with the bigger stories of the week,’ said guest host Katherine Parkinson, as is traditional. These turned out to be steel nationalisation and the bin strike in Birmingham. We also heard about the Blue Origin ‘mission’, gambling on the election date, Liz Truss launching her own app. But the thing everybody was actually talking about? No. That just hung in the air like a vicar’s fart, with everybody pretending it hadn’t happened.

Gareth Roberts (£)

Samizdata quote of the day – what’s so terrible about trade deficits anyway?

What’s more, the imposition of punitive tariffs on poorer countries like Vietnam will simply impoverish rather than improve the potential importing power of these countries. Disrupting the economic development of poorer countries isn’t going to improve the chances of selling to them.

The irony is brutal. Trump’s fixation with trade-deficit “offenders” is punishing the very nations that could one day erase those deficits through development and prosperity. US consumers, businesses, and economic growth will all suffer as a result of the US president’s inability to grasp this elementary logic. There seems to be just one long-term strategy behind all this: unleash populism for immediate electoral returns, blame someone else for the problems that populism inevitably causes, and let someone else deal with the long-term consequences.

Robert Johnson

“…there is a glaring hole in this legislation regarding the protection of adults”

In the Guardian, April O’Neill writes,

The Online Safety Act is now partly enforceable. Paul might make you think a bit harder about it. Understandably, much of the conversation surrounding it has been focused on protecting children, but there is a glaring hole in this legislation regarding the protection of adults. Despite a 2022 report for the Ministry of Justice finding that the role of the internet in radicalisation pathways “was most evident for older rather than younger individuals”, the Tory government backed out from provisions that would have prevented adults from seeing “legal but harmful” content online over fears about freedom of speech.

April O’Neill holds that the people who need to be forcibly protected from hearing bad opinions are old people who distrust left wing media sources. Ms O’Neill is the winner of The Guardian Foundation’s 2025 Emerging Voices Awards (19-25 age category) recognising young talent in political opinion writing.

Samizdata quote of the day – Soviet Britain finds itself innocent

Of all the most pointless organisations in history, the Soviet Union’s Central Election Commission must be amongst the funniest. In the run-up to election day, CEC would be tasked with the important job of formally approving candidates. Fortunately for them, the Communist Party was happy to take on most of the work. On election day, the Commission would ensure that all processes were properly followed, dutifully noting down the names of any dissenters or abstainers. And, in the wake of the election, the CEC would rigorously audit the conduct of the election, invariably concluding that each poll was an unrivalled triumph of Soviet democracy.

It was striking to read the Home Affairs Committee’s recent report into the Southport riots, which adopted much the same tone. The report condemned fears about two-tier policing as “disgraceful”, denying outright the notion that officers were more heavy-handed when responding to right-wing protests. This will raise eyebrows for anybody who can remember the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests turned violent in cities across the UK, following the death of George Floyd. Often, the police stood by and watched the disorder — a far cry from their response to post-Southport rioting.

Sam Bidwell

Samizdata quote of the day – critical trade theory edition

“Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that parts of the Maga movement are embracing a form of Right-wing wokery, with their own dark conspiracy theories, cult of victimhood, identity politics, denial of reality, moral grandstanding, hypersensitivity and purity tests.

“In this vein, whingeing about trade deficits deserves to be dismissed as critical trade theory’, as Trumpian corollary of critical race theory: it postulates, nonsensically, that any shortfall must be caused by unfair practices, oppression or historic injustice. The ‘woke Right,’ a term coined by James Lindsay, is almost as much of a turn-off as the original Left-wing variety.”

Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph (£)

He gives Mr Trump high marks on taking the fight vs DEI, some of the DOGE cuts (with a few caveats), and on energy policy (which in my view is Trump’s ace in the hole). But the broader point Heath makes about where he thinks Trump/Maga is losing it, including this nifty term of Heath’s, “critical trade theory”, is absolutely spot-on. It is, in my view, one of the big blinds spots of today’s populist Right and threatens to undo the good things that a Trump 2.0 might achieve, which would be bad not just for the US, but the West in general. As Heath goes on to write (and remember, he’s a pro-Brexit, free market chap, and not some obdurate Never Trumper), a course correction is needed. And Trump is not incapable of it.

The Liberal Party of Canada got caught playing a dirty trick

“Liberal operatives planted ‘stop the steal’ buttons at conservative conference” reports the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). By “buttons” they mean what we in the UK call “badges”.

Two Liberal Party staffers attended last week’s Canada Strong and Free Networking (CSFN) Conference where they planted buttons that used Trump-style language and highlighted division within the Conservative Party.

[…]

Some attendees noticed buttons appearing at the event.

One said “stop the steal” — an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

[…]

The buttons were scattered in the event space in a way to give the impression that they were made and left by people attending the conference.

In fact, the idea came from the Liberal war room.

On Friday night, in two Ottawa bars, campaign workers shared how the party was behind this move — two Liberal Party staffers attended the conference intended for conservatives and placed these buttons in areas where attendees would find them.

At the pub D’Arcy McGee’s near Parliament Hill, a number of Liberal war room staffers met for drinks on the far side of the bar. This journalist joined one of them for a quick conversation, but heard another staffer, who had previously identified himself as being involved in opposition research, describing how he and a colleague planted the buttons.

The staffer knew he was sitting next to a journalist. When confronted, the staffer at first confirmed what he’d done. But he then denied saying anything when told that CBC News would be reporting on the operation.

To be fair, the staffer’s confident assumption that any Canadian journalist listening would prefer to share in the laughter of the in-group at putting one over the Conservatives rather than report the deception to the public was reasonable given past form. Kudos to Kate McKenna of CBC News for proving him wrong.

The Liberal Party said Sunday evening that some campaigners “regrettably got carried away” with the use of buttons “poking fun” at reports of Conservative infighting.

Liberal spokesperson Kevin Lemkay said the party has conducted a review of the matter and that leader Mark Carney had made it clear “this does not fit his commitment to serious and positive discourse.”

So the culprits have been fired, then? No. Just reassigned.

Ms McKenna’s report finishes with a Conservative spokesperson saying, “One wonders what other dirty tricks the Liberals are behind”. That was my first thought too. Remember those swastikas and confederate flags seen at Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ that Justin Trudeau was so outraged about? While I have no doubt that there were genuine extremists and nutters among the truckers of the Freedom Convoy, as there are in any large political movement, it is perfectly reasonable to wonder whether the Liberal Party was playing the same sort of tricks in 2022 as it was in 2025. A Liberal Party staffer happily boasting in public about having planted fake political emblems to discredit opponents of his party suggests that it is an accepted practice in his subculture.

Would you be willing to do something icky to to save a human life?

“It’s time to pay kidney donors”, writes Jeremiah Johnson in The Dispatch.

He’s wrong. It’s long since past time.

Six years ago, Mr Johnson altruistically donated one of his kidneys to someone who was at that time a stranger. That is admirable. It is also quite rare.

Despite donors like me, end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is still a huge problem in America. It’s a silent epidemic that kills more people than car crashes, breast cancer, homicide or suicide. There is no cure for ESRD—you either get a transplanted kidney or live the rest of your life on dialysis. As of September, there were almost 90,000 people on the kidney waiting list.

The worst part is that, for so many, these deaths are completely preventable.

While there are some ESRD patients who are too old for surgery or too sick to be helped, the majority of ESRD patients can easily extend their lifespan with a donated kidney. Our best estimates show that tens of thousands of people die every year, when they could have been saved by a donated kidney.

We simply don’t have enough kidneys, and people are dying by the tens of thousands because of it. We do, however, have another way to address the problem. We can pay people who choose to donate.

Mr Johnson outlines some of the objections to paying kidney donors:

I know that for some folks, paying for organs seems morally questionable. Perhaps it feels like a violation of the sacred nature of the human body. Or perhaps paying someone to do a good act seems like it inherently violates the altruistic nature of that act. Some folks might have concerns that this will lead to the commoditization of organs or will be used to exploit poor people. I understand and I sympathize with those concerns.

Probably more than I do, but even I acknowledge that the possibility of someone donating a kidney to get out of an immediate financial hole but regretting it later is real. But something similar is true of any consequential decision in life. The only way to make people safe from regretting their decisions would be to take away their control over their own lives. And, as Mr Johnson movingly describes in the next few paragraphs, the human beings currently desperately waiting for a kidney who would be given decades more life (and a life free of the constraints of dialysis) if the number of available kidneys was increased, are also real.

The “icky” thing I mentioned in the title to this post is not donating a kidney. It is allowing someone else to profit by selling one.

Fairytale of Birmingham

In the comments to my previous post, Zerren Yeoville was inspired by the Pogues’ 1987 classic Fairytale of New York to pen the following lines for Birmingham in its current travails:

‘They’ve got rats big as cats
They’ve got rivers of mould
The smell goes right through ya
You’d best have a cold
When you first took the bins out
On a cold winter’s eve
You promised me dustcarts
were “waiting, you’ll see”….’

The rats as big as cats were also mentioned in the Sun‘s headline today:

NO END IN SIGHT Huge blow for locals in UK’s ‘third-world city’ where Army called in to tackle cat-sized rats & 21k TONS of rubbish
A major incident has already been declared by Birmingham City Council

Lest anyone think the Sun is being melodramatic, the BBC’s headline does not merely feature cat-sized rats but cat-sized rats who have begun their insurrection against humanity:

‘Cat-sized rats are attacking our cars’

NickM also provided commentary in verse on the Birmingham bin strike, but, unless I have misunderstood, that one was written by A.I. so it doesn’t count.

Gosh, ChatGPT is getting alarmingly good.

As is traditional with a Labour government

‘Rayner calls in Army to tackle Birmingham bin crisis’, the Telegraph reports:

Angela Rayner has called in the Army to tackle the Birmingham bin crisis.

The Local Government Secretary has used formal powers known as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (Maca) to summon Army experts after a strike by bin workers, which has lasted over a month, left more than 17,000 tons of waste rotting in the streets.

It is understood a small number of military personnel with operational planning expertise are offering logistical support to tackle the crisis. Sources said there were contingency plans in place to scale up the number of soldiers involved if necessary.

If such a scaling-up does prove necessary, Ms Rayner can cite the example of one of the most revered of Labour leaders:

The London dock strike of July 1949, led by Communists, was suppressed when the Attlee Government sent in 13,000 Army troops and passed special legislation to promptly end the strike. His response reveals Attlee’s growing concern that Soviet expansionism, supported by the British Communist Party, was a genuine threat to national security, and that the docks were highly vulnerable to sabotage ordered by Moscow. He noted that the strike was caused not by local grievances, but to help communist unions who were on strike in Canada. Attlee agreed with MI5 that he faced “a very present menace”.

OK, the parallel between Attlee’s summoning of the Army and Rayner’s is not close, and I made it mostly to poke fun at present day lefties, whose hymns of praise to Attlee usually leave out the verse about him using the army to break a strike, and always omit the one about him being the father of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

A better historical parallel to explain Ms Rayner’s distinct lack of solidarity with the striking binmen would be the 1978-9 “Winter of Discontent”.